that they may at length hear that warning voice, those awful, yet gracious words, which have such a manifest reference to the church of Rome, that I scruple not to apply them in their full extent, "Come out of her my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not " of her plagues*."

* Revel, xviii. 4.

SERMON VII.

HEBREWS xiii. 8.

Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.

THE immutability which, in this passage, is so directly ascribed to our Lord, is, in various other parts of Scripture, most expressly, as you may well remember, declared to belong to God only. And this is material to be remembered; for the consequence is obvious; and it will hold good, whether we consider the proposition as applying to our Lord's person, to his promises, or his doctrine; for undoubtedly it can be said of no creature, more especially it can be said of no human being, that in any of these points he

is unchangeable. This glorious attribute is, and must be confined to the Deity, to the great "Father of Lights," whose self existence, whose infinite power, and infinite wisdom, as they must have been fully and equally perfect at all times, can and could be subject neither to increase nor diminution, but must have been the same throughout all ages. In him, therefore, I repeat it, and in him only, with whom, according to this, and other passages, Christ must consequently be one, we are rightly told, that there is no variableness, "neither shadow " of turning."

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That indeed this is not the nature and property of man, as the experience of every day cannot but convince us, so may we see it most strikingly exemplified in the history of that riod, to which I am now, in the course of my subject, naturally led to refer. The age of the Reformation, as it is marked by many and singular benefits of which it was productive to mankind, so does it abound with numerous proofs of the imbecility inherent in human nature, its want of steadiness, and proneness to error. In the act of emerging from darkness, we see the first reformers unable (as it were) to bear the light. The effulgence which at once broke in upon them, one would suppose,

dazzled their sight, and prevented their seeing many of the objects presented to them in the same point of view; and hence it happened that that entire agreement and union did not take place which was so desirable, and might have been expected. When the existence and enor mity of abuses were equally apparent and confessed, we might well have hoped that those who were unanimous in condemning and combating them, would be content to proceed to their removal by the same means, and with the same spirit.

To take away that which is corrupt, and to leave that which is sound, to let the tree stand after it is freed from its rotten branches, seems to be the mode in all such cases, not only the most fit and natural to be pursued, but likely to be attended with the least difficulty. It is the mode which we say, and, we trust, with reason say, was happily pursued in this country. Could it have been pursued in other countries also, not only a greater and a more strict union would have prevailed among the reformed churches in general, but in the individual churches themselves much less occasion, or rather no occasion at all, for schism would have been ministered.

Unfortunately, however, that took place which is common upon other occasions, that men flew from one extreme to the other; from the most abject slavery, they passed to the

wildest liberty. And indeed this is perhaps the hardest trial to which a human being can be subjected. It is at least the most severe test of strength in the moral, as well as in the physical world, to restrain exertion within its due bounds. In all cases where it is called upon to put forth its utmost powers, the mind, as well as the body man, is apt to overshoot the mark, to be hurried beyond its proper object.

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Hence it was that with many individuals, nay, with many bodies of men, the odium which had been so justly excited by the corruptions of popery was extended to many particulars with which they had in reality no sort of connection. Matters the most indifferent were pronounced to be an abomination; ceremonies the most innocent, nay edifying, were cried down, because they had been used by the ministers of the Romish church, because in their descent from the remotest antiquity they had been handed down through those, whose touch was now to be considered as in every act of them communicating pollution and disease.

Nor was this all. The infirmity of man shewed itself also in those jealousies, "those oppositions "of science," if I may so use the term, which have in all ages been the fruitful source of such inveterate dissentions. The glaring and enor

1 Tim. vi. 20.